Bleach: Dominating Soul Society in One Sting

The uppermost floor of Las Noches.

Soifon stepped into the innermost chamber and was immediately struck by a wall of powerful Spiritual Pressure.

At the center of the room, a purple box roughly the size of a coffee table floated suspended in midair. Its surface shimmered with deep violet-black light, and countless fine spirit-particle runes coiled around it like chains, radiating an aura that made the heart seize.

So this is what Aizen left behind.

Soifon stepped closer and examined the seals on the box carefully.

So that was what Sōsuke Aizen meant when he said "only Soifon can open it"—

It was simply because only Soifon's Spiritual Pressure was powerful enough to pulverize this Kidō seal.

She reached out and pressed her palm flat against the surface. A crisp crack rang out, and the seal shattered into violet light that dissolved into the air.

Soifon opened the box. Inside lay a Hōgyoku suffused with deep, luminous purple radiance — its quality of Spiritual Pressure an exact match for what Aizen had radiated at the sixth stage of his evolution.

Even sitting untouched, the pressure it silently emanated was enough to make an ordinary captain-level Shinigami struggle to breathe.

Beside the Hōgyoku lay a meticulously organized stack of documents and a sheet of paper covered in dense handwriting.

She unrolled the scroll. The handwriting was Sōsuke Aizen's own — it detailed the method by which the Hōgyoku had been made, his vision for using it as a replacement for the Soul King, and a letter.

[If Captain Soifon is reading this, it means I have already failed.]

[Perhaps I ascended to the throne of the Soul King, yet was still unable to change the world as I wished.]

[If Captain Soifon finds that something has gone wrong, please drag me down from that false throne, and use this Hōgyoku — which has been fused with the power of many — to forge a new Soul King.]

[There is one other possibility… that I did not defeat Yhwach, who was resurrected from the future.]

It was clear that when Sōsuke Aizen left this Hōgyoku behind, he had already grown somewhat pessimistic.

And yet, even so, he had still climbed to the Royal Palace.

Even knowing he might die.

Soifon was silent for a moment. She tucked the box inside her robes, tore open a Garganta, and slipped away without a sound — returning to the captain's office of the Second Division, where she set the box and the scroll on her desk.

Then she turned, stepped back into the Garganta, and emerged in the suburban park on the outskirts of Karakura Town.

The sun was setting in the west, painting the horizon a deep shade of amber and red. Soifon stood alone on the open grass, the evening breeze stirring her hair and her Haori.

"This is the place… the Gate of Hell."

The Fullbring power within her stirred at the movement of her will. Pale gold markings kindled to a faint glow across her skin, and the phantom silhouette of Enma-ten materialized behind her.

The golden phantom clenched its fist and drove it downward into the earth. Concentric rings of eerie black ripples spread outward from the impact, and the Gate of Hell appeared before Soifon — lying flat, horizontal.

Compared to the last time it had appeared, the gate was shut — but black miasma still seeped through the cracks. Wherever that darkness passed, the green grass withered and charred in an instant, and even the soil took on an uncanny dark red hue.

The moment it appeared, the Gate of Hell wrenched itself open a sliver, as though it had no control over itself. Soifon didn't hesitate — she became a streak of golden light and slipped through the gap.

An instant later, the Gate of Hell slowly closed and dissolved into shadow.

At almost the exact same moment, red alarms began blaring in the monitoring center of the Department of Research and Development.

"Detected! Abnormal high-concentration Hell-miasma surge! Location confirmed: World of the Living, southern suburban park, Karakura Town!"

Ⅱ

"Surge intensity… far exceeding all historical records! Threshold breached!"

"Surge duration… 1.5 seconds! Gate of Hell opening confirmed!"

"On-site residual miasma concentration critically high — classified as the largest Hell-contamination event on record!"

The cold electronic tones, punctuated by the frantic reports of the monitoring officers, yanked the Gotei 13 — who had only just been celebrating the end of the war — straight back to maximum alert.

Hell.

"Your Hōgyoku has already evolved to a perfect state — so why did you still need to absorb Ikomikidomoe's power?"

Azashiro Sōya's brow was furrowed, his eyes roiling with miasma as he watched Sōsuke Aizen with barely concealed wariness.

"Nothing in this world is perfect, Azashiro Sōya."

Having absorbed Ikomikidomoe, the signs of Hollowfication began to manifest on Aizen's form. The butterfly wings at his back no longer radiated purple luminescence — they were gradually becoming solid.

Because of his overwhelming power, the will of Hell favored Sōsuke Aizen above all others; nearly all of the miasma converged upon him, accelerating his corruption.

Now, corrupted by Hell, Sōsuke Aizen had begun to regret expending the effort to forge a second Hōgyoku and leave it for Soifon.

"Whatever the reason, your growing stronger is a good thing."

Kiganjō Kenpachi rested his Zanpakutō across his shoulder. "I can feel it — now that you've joined us, the seal on the Gate of Hell is gradually giving way."

"As expected of Captain Aizen." Gin Ichimaru tucked his hands into his sleeves, smiling his shadow of a smile. "Although — at whose hands did Captain Aizen die, I wonder? Was it Captain Soifon, or…"

Before Gin could finish, Aizen raised his hand and fired a purple Cero that grazed past Gin's head and detonated in the distance, mushrooming into a towering column of smoke.

"Nothing more than a sneak-attacking rat."

The provocation cut short, a flash of cold fury crossed Sōsuke Aizen's eyes, and the Hollowfied quality in his aura deepened another degree.

The crushing pressure made the atmosphere suddenly congeal. Even the expression on Kiganjō Kenpachi's face flickered with a hint of gravity.

[This guy — I wonder if my Gourmet Corridor can handle him…]

Indeed — Kiganjō Kenpachi, who had been playing the role of the easygoing elder brother among them, was no pushover either.

The will of Hell was like the most primal of Menos Grande — it would devour everything before it without discrimination, even its own kind.

The peace between them was a fiction. It was nothing more than a fragile pretense sustained for the sake of breaking the seal on the Gate of Hell. Once the seal shattered and the denizens of Hell had claimed every inch of the Three Worlds' land—

—the civil war of Hell would begin.

At that very moment, golden radiance tore through the black miasma.

Soifon hung suspended in midair, wreathed in brilliant golden light. Behind her, the Fullbring phantom blazed like a small sun, ceaselessly purifying the surging black miasma that roiled all around.

The phosphorescent vapors transformed into pure spirit particles the instant they touched the golden light, absorbed into Soifon's spirit body.

She looked down at the vast, lifeless crimson wasteland below — endless miasma, and countless writhing, wailing resentful spirits.

"Against the likes of you, there's no need to play by anyone's rules."

"Bankai — Jashaku Raikōben."

Golden radiance erupted from her body, and that massive lance-blade took shape in her hands.

Soifon leveled Jashaku Raikōben's barrel at the boundless dark-red earth below.

There was no specific target — because everything within sight was something that needed to be purified.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM—!!!!!

Golden rounds poured down in an unbroken torrent. Each bolt of lightning that struck carved a terrifying crater hundreds of meters across into the dark-red earth, purifying every trace of miasma and every Hell-creature within the blast radius.

Even those powerful figures who had once been defeated by Soifon were swallowed beneath the relentless bombardment, their fates unknown.

As the overlapping explosions merged into a continuous roar, the phantom of Enma-ten behind Soifon grew steadily more solid — its facial features sharpening into clarity.

After one unbroken salvo of bombardment, the black miasma hanging over Hell had thinned considerably.

Even the view had grown clearer.

At the edge of that zone of earth-shattering explosions and purifying light, several figures raised their heads almost simultaneously, gazing up at the slender silhouette hovering in the air.

"To think she'd charge straight in — fighting on our home ground while enduring Hell's corruption. That's Soifon for you, alright…"

Azashiro Sōya eyed the golden Fullbring behind Soifon with undisguised wariness, as though it were something that innately countered him.

But unlike Azashiro Sōya's caution and restraint, Kiganjō Kenpachi's reaction was something else entirely.

The moment his gaze landed on the now-solid golden phantom behind Soifon, the last faint ember of reason remaining in those eyes evaporated in an instant.

—The power of Adenas — the Soul King!!!

"Bankai—!"

"Gourmet Corridor!!!"

Hell's dark-red earth heaved and cracked violently!

A spherical black creature dozens of kilometers across erupted from the deepest depths below, throwing open a maw large enough to swallow mountains, snapping upward without distinguishing friend from foe.

Gourmet Corridor rampaged across the surface in a wide arc, then its malice-laden gaze locked onto the golden figure in the distance.

It spread its enormous jaws and hurtled straight at Soifon.

Faced with that all-consuming, sky-blotting maw, Soifon's expression didn't change. She simply made a small adjustment to Jashaku Raikōben's barrel and pulled the trigger.

A torrent of golden lightning poured into Gourmet Corridor's open mouth, blasted clean through the back of its skull, and detonated a bottomless chasm in the dark-red earth below.

"If I can just swallow you—"

Kiganjō Kenpachi materialized behind Soifon without a single warning!

His eyes blazed with frenzied fire, Zanpakutō raised high overhead: "Then I'll be free!!!"

But Enma-ten behind Soifon seemed to have anticipated it. The golden fist moved first — driving clean through Kiganjō Kenpachi's chest with effortless ease.

The black miasma was rapidly purified by the golden radiance.

Kiganjō Kenpachi's movement froze.

He looked down, staring in disbelief at the golden arm buried in his chest.

"You…"

Soifon tilted her head slightly, looking at Kiganjō Kenpachi's twisted expression just inches away — with a trace of surprise in her voice:

"The depth of your corruption… is far greater than it looks."

The madness in Kiganjō Kenpachi's eyes slowly receded. His body began to crumble, dissolving into countless tiny motes of light that drifted apart into the air.

"…Thanks."

Those were the last words he left behind.

Soifon withdrew her gaze, feeling the Spiritual Pressure within her climb another step. The Enma-ten behind her seemed to grow more solid in turn.

[In his final moment he reclaimed his clarity — is he thanking me?]

After dealing with Gin Ichimaru and Kaname Tōsen in the same manner, Soifon raised Jashaku Raikōben and turned slowly to face the last two.

—Sōsuke Aizen, and Azashiro Sōya, standing at his side.

"I've been wondering about something since the very beginning."

"Why is it that you people… never seem to learn how to gang up on someone?"

Soifon trained the barrel on them both.

"I just purified those three, and I noticed something…"

"The aura coming off all of you — it's oddly similar. Like you all share the same source."

At those words, Sōsuke Aizen and Azashiro Sōya exchanged a glance — then both broke into low, suppressed laughter.

An instant later, Azashiro Sōya's body dissolved into a dense, viscous mass of black miasma that surged violently into Sōsuke Aizen's body.

The aura emanating from Aizen spiked in an instant — even the Hōgyoku at his chest was stained black.

"So you've figured it out… worthy of the little one Adenas chose."

"In truth, they were all nothing more than fragments of myself."

"From the moment I fell into Hell, whether any of them retained their lucidity was merely a matter of my whim."

The voice seemed to carry multiple layers of sound, as though two distinct voices were speaking simultaneously from within a single body.

Soifon's brow furrowed slightly. In the instant she met those pitch-black eyes of "Aizen," an absurd thought surfaced from the depths of her mind:

"You… don't tell me you're Hell itself?!"

The figure slowly shook its head — then slowly nodded:

"Am I Hell, or is Hell me?"

"Having stood guard over this place for a million years… I have long since forgotten…"

With those words, the other party's identity was all but spoken aloud.

Soifon's pupils contracted slightly.

She recalled what Ichibē Hyōsube had told her — the fifth of the great noble houses, who had suppressed Hell, had lost themselves in that accursed place.

The index finger resting on the trigger eased back a fraction. Soifon asked with genuine curiosity: "You are the fifth great noble house — the ones who sealed Hell?"

"To think there is still someone in the Three Worlds who remembers that name…"

"What a pity… I have long since forgotten my own surname."

Upon hearing the ancient, nearly-forgotten words [the Fifth Noble House], a flicker of something — the faintest ghost of nostalgia — crossed the eyes of "Aizen."

"Now… I only want to break free from this lightless prison!!!"

"I will go to the Three Worlds!! I will go to the Royal Palace!! I will find Adenas — I want revenge!!!"

The figure slowly raised a hand, pointing toward the dark-red sky overhead, as though to tear open the cage of Hell itself.

The moment those last two words exploded across the skies of Hell, the surrounding miasma churned in violent waves from the shockwave.

To think — a million years later, the fifth noble house that had willingly sacrificed itself to suppress Hell had become the will of Hell itself, burning for revenge against His Majesty the Soul King on high.

"What if I told you that His Majesty the Soul King is already dead?" Soifon held its gaze and added, "I mean the Soul King of old — Adenas is gone."

Adenas… dead?

How could that be?!

At that news, even the churning miasma within Aizen's pitch-black eyes stalled for a heartbeat.

Then, an inexpressible torrent of violent emotion shattered whatever composure it had left:

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible! Who—?!"

"Who killed him?! Was it the Tsunayashiro?! The Shihōin?! The Kuchiki?! Tell me!"

Aizen stepped forward, his aura surging like boiling magma, making the very air around him shudder.

"None of them."

"The one who killed His Majesty the Soul King… was Yhwach."

Soifon shook her head calmly.

Yhwach…

The voice faltered — then an expression bordering on absurdity surfaced on its face.

Then it buried its face in its hands and broke into wild, uncontrollable laughter.

"Yhwach?! That little creature who could barely scrape by in the chaos — even it had enough power to slay its own father?!"

The laughter died. Aizen rubbed the aching muscles of his laugh-weary face, and his expression darkened again.

"Since Adenas is already dead…"

"Then I'll destroy the Three Worlds he loved most!"

"Hadō #99: Goryū Tenmetsu!!!"

It raised its right hand high. The phosphorescent miasma around it surged like a boiling sea.

Five colossal black dragons — each forged from condensed Spiritual Pressure and miasma — erupted skyward from behind!

Each one hundreds of meters in length, wreathed in ominous black flame, they opened their roaring maws and bore down on Soifon.

Faced with those world-devouring dragons, Enma-ten behind Soifon moved.

The golden figure shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, charging head-on into those five sky-blotting black dragons.

Yes — Soifon now understood at last. Her Fullbring carried not only purifying power, but sheer overwhelming numbers.

High damage on the left fist, higher damage on the right!

Golden purifying power collided with black miasma.

Enma-ten drove both hands into the forehead of the first dragon, and the black miasma dissolved and transformed under the encroachment of golden light.

Simultaneously, its body rapidly expanded — swelling into a golden colossus well over a hundred meters tall.

In the blink of an eye, the black faded from all five dragons, replaced by pure golden Spiritual Pressure that wound itself around Enma-ten's arms.

Enma-ten turned.

Its two hands aimed squarely at the figure with its right arm still raised high.

"What—?!"

Aizen's pupils contracted sharply — the purification had been impossibly fast.

Five columns of golden light struck their target with perfect precision, erupting in radiance brighter than the sun. Purifying power and miasma intertwined, becoming a golden storm that swept across the entirety of Hell.

How much time passed, none could say.

The golden light gradually faded.

For the first time, the air of Hell grew clear.

Soifon stood where she was, watching the figure that had fallen in the distance.

Sōsuke Aizen lay quietly there. The black miasma around him had vanished entirely, and the Hōgyoku at his chest had returned to its original purple.

His eyes were closed. He did not move.

Soifon waited a long while, then stepped forward toward that familiar figure lying on the ground like a rug.

She stood over him and looked down at that familiar face, murmuring to herself: "Dead?"

A voice — clear, androgynous, and utterly unhurried — spoke from close beside her without the slightest warning: "He isn't dead yet."

Wait — another expert?!

A chill shot through Soifon. To approach this close without triggering her spiritual senses was no ordinary adversary!

She leapt back in an instant, clearing dozens of meters in a single bound, and at the same moment brought Jashaku Raikōben's barrel around to bear on the source of the voice—

A figure stood there.

Their entire body radiated a soft, gentle white light. Their features were delicate, indeterminate of gender.

In those eyes — each bearing four pupils — a calm, unhurried gaze rested upon her.

"…The Soul King?!"

Soifon's heartbeat missed a beat.

Aren't you dead?!

Of course, she kept that thought locked firmly inside — that would have been just a little too irreverent to say aloud.

The Soul King raised the faintest smile at the corners of those lips, and in those four-pupiled eyes, a warmth gathered:

"Thank you for everything you have done for the Three Worlds, Soifon."

"You have done more than enough. More than well enough."

"From here, leave it to me."

With that, the Soul King ceased concealing its presence, and the aura surrounding it began to climb steadily — tier upon tier.

The crimson earth began to split and fracture. Countless chasms of bottomless depth spread outward in all directions. Aizen's body slipped through one of those fissures and tumbled down into the abyss below.

Soifon was driven back step after step under the pressure of that aura. She raised her head and looked up at the sky.

The dark red was fading.

In its place — a clear, brilliant blue, just like the sky of the World of the Living.

"Ahhhh—!!!"

A piercing, agonized scream rose from the abyss.

It was the voice of the Fifth Noble House — that existence which had suppressed Hell for a million years and in the end merged with it entirely — its final wail.

The Soul King hung suspended in midair, its radiance growing ever more brilliant.

It looked down at Hell, which was being purified beneath it:

"Long ago, in order to stabilize the Three Worlds, I was too stretched to spare any attention — I had no choice but to use the Gate of Hell to suppress this place."

"But now, with your help, Soifon, I finally have the capacity to deal with this festering wound."

The purification continued for several days. The long-dead Soul King expended the last of all its power, sweeping Hell clean of every trace of miasma, and permanently eradicating the source that had been ceaselessly generating that phosphorescent miasma.

That celestial body called Hell was being drawn — by the Soul King's boundless divine might — into the celestial body known as Soul Society.

In the Seireitei, soldiers looked up as one, and from the far edge of the sky something vast seemed to drift closer — like an island approaching.

As the "island" drew nearer, the skies of Soul Society darkened. The near-apocalyptic darkness plunged every living being into bottomless terror.

But soon, amid a violent trembling, sunlight flooded back across the land.

"I'm sensing the Spiritual Pressure of Soifon and His Majesty the Soul King…"

The Captain-Commander snapped his head around, staring toward a distant and unfamiliar piece of land.

Hell, now purified, had formally been merged into Soul Society.

Having done all of this, the Soul King's form began to dissolve. It poured its remaining power into Soul Society, and became one with the foundational laws that governed the Three Worlds.

From this day forward, Soul Society — in addition to its stewardship of departed souls — would also become the relay station for the cycle of spirit particles across all Three Worlds.

____

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